Archive | August 2016
August 21, 2016  

Councillor Tony Belton’s North Battersea, September, 2016, Newsletter (# 88)

1.      OK, so I know it’s still August but I am off tomorrow and won’t be back until well into September and so here is a very short September Newsletter.

2.      I wasn’t really complaining last month, just commenting, that I had received a criticism of the July newsletter, but I would like to thank you for the many very positive responses I got in reply to that criticism. In fact, as a number of you remarked on the scale of Wandsworth Council’s operations, it has given me lots of ideas for my future “Did you know” sections!

3.      So what did happen in August? Well, I started, as promised, on August 2nd by reviewing, with members of the Battersea Society, their suggested list of buildings of local historic and/or architectural significance. It was a magnificently eclectic list, ranging from stink pipes (built over Victorian sewers to allow the smell to escape – yes, there are a couple that I know of in Battersea) to Victorian post boxes, from splendid nineteenth-century houses to long sets of granite paving stones. We even decided to ask for the listing of four Winstanley murals – see “Did you know?” below.

4.     I had my Council surgery

St. Mary's RC school, Queenstown

St. Mary’s RC school, Queenstown

in Battersea Reference Library on Saturday, 6th August, and then on 10th August I visited the new St. Mary’s R. C. Primary School in Lockington Road. The site is called Battersea Exchange as a reference to the connection between Battersea Park and Queenstown Road railway stations. It is developing fast, and will contain several hundred flats, as well as the school which will open for some classes this September. It should be noted that a few years ago, the school would have been built by the Council, using taxpayer money, but this school is built as a by-product of private development. Is that a good thing? Saves us all money but possibly only at the cost of allowing bigger, more profitable developments?

Pedalos on way home

Pedalos on way home

5.     On the 7th I, and my partner, decided to go to Weymouth for a day trip from Clapham Junction. It was a great day, very sunny and warm, and a reminder of just how good it is to have CJ on our door-step and, therefore, every south coast resort within a couple of hours from home.

Wandle, Charlie Reed, Turf Project

Wandle, Charlie Reed, Turf Project

6.     On the 12th I was persuaded to go to an exhibition on the River Wandle: A constant Amid Change Exhibition. It was organised by the Turf Centre, Croydon, which is a non-profit artist-run community project. Actually if you know as much about the River Wandle and its long industrial history as I do, then you would find it disappointing, but as East Croydon is only 10 minutes from CJ it was no great hardship. (The first Council I ever served on (1971-74) started the Wandle Walk alongside the river. It seemed a bit of a joke back then but now it really is a pedestrian and bicycle highway). It was a small exhibition of the paintings by local school teacher Charlie Reed and in themselves they were nice enough. This was my favourite.

7.     I had the Planning Applications Committee on 15th. It really was a nothing event with only 7 really minor applications, but the hot news, that has a big impact on

Hope Street Sports

Hope Street Sports

Latchmere, is that the Hope Street Sports Centre has been saved for at least a couple more years. This happy reprieve is, perhaps, a completely unexpected result of the Brexit vote, because, instead of proceeding with a private development of luxury properties, just off Shuttleworth Road, the company concerned is selling its stake in the site to Wandsworth Council for council housing. The site will be used to re-house tenants and leaseholders from the Winstanley, during the regeneration.

8.     I think that Simon Hogg, Wendy Speck and I can reasonably claim some credit for this outcome as ward councillors. We have kept constant pressure on the Wandsworth administration for a full one:one replacement of social housing being redeveloped on the estate and for the Hope Street Centre to be kept until an adequate replacement is provided as part of the Winstanley regeneration. This new site frees up space for the Council both to provide social housing and keep the Centre open.

9.     Another piece of good news is that as well as starting night services on the Northern and Central lines of the underground as from 19th August, Transport for London (TFL) announced an improvement of evening and week-end services for the 344, a bus route, which many of you use. The improvement is an increase in regularity with it becoming a one in 10 minute as opposed to 12-minute service; sounds really small but it is an 18% increase!

10. On the 18th we had the by-election in Tooting ward. Labour’s candidate, Paul White, a close friend, won with a majority of 823, which represents a swing to Labour of over 8%. The turn-out of 20% was, of course, very low as it always was likely to be for an August by-election, but nevertheless it was a welcome victory.

11. On 19th August, we are going to stay with Mary Jay, Douglas Jay’s widow, in Oxfordshire. Most readers will not know either Douglas or Mary, but Douglas was Battersea’s M.P. from 1946-1973 and a member of Harold Wilson’s Cabinet, 1964-67. Douglas was a doughty politician – he campaigned against the inner London motorway box and won (the Box would have obliterated much of modern Battersea, creating a Spaghetti Junction centred on the Latchmere) and against Britain’s entry into what was then the Common Market (and lost). I wonder what he would have said about the Referendum result. I know he would have been very dismissive about the Referendum so-called “debate”.

12. And on Monday, 23rd, I am off for my three-week holiday to Florence and then the Croatian coast.

My Programme for September

1.     I am at the Planning Applications Committee on the 14th September.

2.     And the Met Police’s Special Neighbourhood Team (SNT) meeting at the George Shearing centre on the15th, although I must admit that recently I have missed the SNT rather more than I would have liked.

3.     I have the Wandsworth Conservation Area Committee on the 19th September. And on 20th, the Community Services Committee.

4.     Then on Saturday 24th September I have the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. I am not at all sure that I will be going to it, even though it can be great fun. This year though it will be much enlivened, for good or for ill, by the announcement of the result of our big Leadership Election between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith. What price a peaceful week after that?

Do you know?

Last month I asked which 150th anniversary was being celebrated this year at the Este Road Fire Station. It was in fact the 150th anniversary of the Metropolitan Fire Service. And the Este Road building was said to be a “cut-price” miniature of the Victoria Embankment’s London Fire Brigade Headquarters. Do you see the resemblance?

Winstanley Estate

Winstanley Estate

I said in paragraph 3 above that we asked for the listing of four murals on the Winstanley estate. Here is one of them in Thomas Baines Road. Had you ever really stopped and looked at it? And can you tell me anything about them, such as the name of the sculptor?
August 7, 2016  

Why throw money at the Town Halls to resolve the financial crisis?

In my last blog I suggested that the Government should use local authorities to kick start the economy. There are many advantages to using local authorities rather than very large infrastructure schemes like HS2, Hinckley Point nuclear power station, Trident replacement or even the Olympic Games.

Many of these very large capital projects are politically contentious and sometimes very slow to have an impact. Most get bogged down in expensive public enquiries and a proportion probably won’t come off. What is more much of the early expenditure is spent on highly paid staff, such as lawyers, architects and designers and not construction and support staff. An equivalent £1billion spread amongst Britain’s 500 plus local authorities would, on the other hand, have an almost immediate impact.

£10 or £20 million given to my local authority, Wandsworth, could be used to buy every school pupil a laptop or to implement 10 or 20 small, local environmental improvements. I think we would have little problem in spending most of it within a couple of years, with an immediate small but significant local economic impact. Such a nation-wide scheme might, of course, include some silly, vanity projects and some failures but nothing as disastrous and costly as failed and useless mega-projects. What is more such a scheme could easily be targeted to, say, the local authorities in the poorest parts of the country, with the highest unemployment rates or the worst health statistics.

I see William Keegan in the Observer (7th August 2016) agrees with me about using local authorities to kick start the economy, though I must confess I am more one of his disciples than the other way round!

A similar suggestion comes from one of today’s great iconoclasts, Simon Jenkins. He suggests that the simplest solution would be to throw money directly at people. His suggestion reminds me of Alistair Darling’s scrappage scheme, which gave people £2,000 to car owners to scrap their old car and buy a new one. But Jenkins’ idea is more open-ended, in that people could spend on clothing, food or, and here’s the rub, foreign holidays – I have nothing against foreign countries, of course, but, if one is trying to kick start the UK economy then giving it all to Benidorm seems rather pointless.

The problem with Jenkins’ idea is, it seems to me, that it is not targeted to those most in need and there would, I think, be considerable difficulty in targeting, say, the lower paid or the unemployed. It is an interesting idea and gets round Jenkins’ perennial scepticism about bureaucracy. But the time of local democracy has come (again). Think of Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham in the 1880s or John Burns in Battersea in the 1900s, think of Attlee and McMillan boosting council house building in the 1940s and 1950s.

Boosting the local economy means boosting local democracy and society. Forget quantitative easing, which goes to the banks; forget big vanity projects, over-budget, over-time; think local – NOW.

August 4, 2016  

Austerity in the Town Halls; Recession out there for working people

Today the Bank of England took crisis action by lowering interest rates to 0.25% and throwing money at the business heights of the economy. Will it work? Cutting rates to 0.5% seven years ago didn’t. Nothing, Osborne did, really changed the equation.

What would work immediately, however, would be to take the heat off public expenditure. What do I mean?

Well right now Wandsworth and Richmond-upon-Thames are cutting service levels and reducing the number of jobs right here in south west London under pressure from this Government’s cuts in local government grants; 400 jobs to be precise. And all because the Tory party has an ideological commitment to reducing the size of the state – whatever that means.

The same thing, and worse, is happening in every local authority across the country. Similar cuts are happening in many more public sector organisations.

Meanwhile what do the councillors do? Well, all of us were under great pressure to vote for the jobs cuts. The majority (Tory) party councillors voted for the cuts because they cannot face opposing “their” government and the minority (Labour) councillors are not in a position to defy the government and are “scared” of being accused of voting for an increased Council Tax.

I’ve been around long enough to remember when the Ted Heath Government (1970-74), the Thatcher Government (about 1982-86) and the first Tony Blair Government (1997-2002) faced similar economic crises. What did they do? They threw money at local government with orders to spend, spend, spend in an attempt to kick-start the economy.

The public sector turned out to be far more effective than throwing money at the banks; that was tried in 2009 and it didn’t work.

Just when will Teresa May take the same kind of actions and just how silly will the cuts of 2010-16 look when that happens?

August 2, 2016  

Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere August, 2016, Newsletter (# 87)

  1. I received one criticism of my last newsletter, which said that I spent too much time talking about planning applications and the elections of the last couple of months. My critic also said that I failed to cover some Council matters. I think a quick defence is due. Firstly I have always said that this blog is a diary, my diary, of being a councillor. I have never claimed to cover everything and nor could I. Perhaps not everyone realises that Wandsworth Council’s turnover is only just less than £1 billion, yes billion and not just a million a year; that its rental income alone amounts to more than £110 million; that the property assets of the Council (remember many thousands of council flats and houses, swimming pools, offices, etc.) are worth £2billions; and that, if the Council were measured in the same way as private companies, it would be about 160 in the Footsie 250.
  2. Secondly, if an elected councillor didn’t mention elections in the two months when we had a Mayoral election, the Referendum and a Parliamentary by-election in the Borough, perhaps some would make criticisms – the other way. So to my critic, I note your comments and will try to take the spirit of them on board but I don’t totally agree!
  3. I wrote last month of the flooding that affected Sendall Court and its neighbours Shaw and Clark Lawrence Courts. The floods messed up the lifts in the three blocks but Sendall Court’s lifts were out of action for the best part of a week and, what is worse, the staircase, which has no natural light, was in total darkness. So, I asked a Council Question (like Prime Minister’s Question Time but not quite!) at the Council Meeting on 20th July and at last got an answer on 28th July.
  4. It was a bureaucratic answer, like one expects from insurance companies,    https://democracy.wandsworth.gov.uk/documents/s44848/Council%20Questions%20and%20Answers%2020th%20July%202016%20final.pdf, Question 31, page 33/60), and not at all what the residents deserve. I will be putting the case throughout the summer. I will be arguing that those living on the 5th to 10th floor young or old, fit or not so fit, should get at least a £50 goodwill cut from their rent or service charges.
  5. While I am writing about very, specific local issues, I would like to announce that I won an argument for a tenant living in one of the very rare private flats in the area bounded by the railway, Falcon, Plough and York Roads, and who has zero access to parking facilities – neither a residents’ nor a tenants’ nor a leaseholders’ parking permit. The Council have agreed that he should be able to buy a council parking permit to use in one of the very much under-used council carparks, such as the ones in Grant Road. There are a few other people similarly living with this problem, for example in St. Luke’s Court, Falcon Road or the flats at 105 Meyrick Road. I would be pleased to hear from any of you if you think you need the same facility.
  6. Meanwhile on the 1st July, my niece and her husband took me and t’other half to the Hammersmith Apollo to see Bill Bailey, the comedian. It was a very amusing and very cleverly crafted show and he is clearly brilliant at very shaggy dog stories. One I remember was about taking his extended family into the forested depths of Finland, about dog sleds and getting snowed in, about grandmas falling off sleds, and all in order to see the Northern Lights. It had all the elements of a good shaggy dog, with endless details before the punchline, which effectively was that it was total cloud cover that night in June in the depths of the Finnish forests. Instead, the best place to see the Northern Lights that night was Dagenham!
  7. On Monday, 4th July, I took High View School’s Council on a visit to meet the Mayor of Wandsworth and to see the Council Chamber. The Mayor, with some of the staff and me, gave a “lesson” about what your council does. I think the picture of the School Council standing round and behind the Mayor’s chair shows that they enjoyed the visit.
  8. On the 5th I had the Community Services Committee, where amongst the items for discussion were the extension/rejection of CPZ (controlled parking zones or meters) schemes in the Eltringham/Petergate and Holgate/Maysoule areas. There was agreement to introduce Saturday restrictions in Eltringham and Petergate but to refuse the petition for a CPZ in Holgate/Maysoule. The reasons are given in two Committee papers, which can be seen at https://democracy.wandsworth.gov.uk/documents/s44394/16-269%20Eltringham%20Road%20CPZ%202nd%20review.pdf and https://democracy.wandsworth.gov.uk/documents/s44398/16-270%20Holgate-outcome%20consultation-June2016%20v2.pdf. However, I think there may be scope to resolve the problems some Holgate residents have in much the same way as I referred to in Paragraph 5 above. So if you are interested then please contact me.
  9. On the 9th July, I went, as I do most years, to the Triangle (Poyntz, Knowles, Shellwood roads) Street party. It was as enjoyable as ever with the Mayor and the Fire Brigade putting in guest appearances. But I am afraid that there were fewer people there than usual. Maybe this was because it was a cool, July evening, of which there have been rather too many this summer!
  10. I was lobbied during the month by residents wanting to know what might happen in Falcon Park. There is, as many will know, a plan for a new artificial pitch, but I was asked whether there was any chance of the artificial football pitch at the neighbouring Sacred Heart school site being expanded. I made enquiries at the Town Hall and got the kind of bureaucratic, negative response that I expected. It is too long to repeat here but, if you are interested, you can access both question and answer at https://democracy.wandsworth.gov.uk/documents/s44848/Council%20Questions%20and%20Answers%2020th%20July%202016%20final.pdf, Question 39, page 40/60.
  11. I went to the Battersea Society’s annual summer party at St. Mary’s Church on the riverside on 14th July and that too did not seem as well attended as usual. I wonder why? Could it be that this cool summer has dampened much enthusiasm.
  12. I was in Battersea Park on Saturday, 16th, and went to The Bandstand Party. I guess that a number of Latchmere residents might have been there – I certainly met a few old friends. It was, of course, centred on the old Victorian bandstand and featured jazz and country/folk music. The Park was looking great and lots of people were out there playing cricket, softball, rounders, soccer and other sports from all over the world. It’s always fun being in the Park on a nice day and, if the Bandstand Party becomes an annual event, then I recommend it.
  13. On the 18th I dropped in on Colette Morris, the Head of Christ Church Primary school, to learn about the school’s gardening expertise and their award for open air learning. Christ Church is the only urban school in the country to have this award. The school also has the benefit of being right next to Falcon Park, where they have a daily mile run for all. No obesity at Christ Church!
  14. The Council Meeting on 20th July was totally focused on the Referendum Result and the reaction to it of the Council and of councillors. We unanimously agreed a motion pledging to do our best to maintain the best possible community relations here in Wandsworth and to show solidarity with all current immigrant populations resident locally. It was generally a civilised and reasonable debate, but it still strikes me as odd that Tory councillors blamed the result, and hence the resignation of PM, Cameron, on Labour for not getting the “Remain” vote out. This despite the fact that of 19 Labour councillors probably 17 voted Remain and only 2 perhaps voted Brexit, whereas of the 41 Tory councillors at least a dozen were proud of their Brexit vote – a vote that in its Labour:Tory split seemed to be reflected across the country.
  15. On the 21st July I had the Planning Applications Committee (PAC), about which my critic will be delighted to hear I have nothing to say – there was nothing on the agenda, which would have much interested the neighbours let alone any casual reader!
  16. On Saturday, 23rd I rather sadly went to my first Hindu funeral. This, the public funeral, was on the tenth day after the death; the preferred dress for both men and women was white, although I noticed many of the younger men were wearing smart black suits; the standard food, a must I was told in Gujerat, was a comparatively mild, vegetarian curry. The private funeral, for relatives only, took place two days later on the twelfth and marks the release of the soul from the body, and the thirteenth day marks samskara (reincarnation). As I understood it, it is not fit and proper to mourn after that, since by now the soul will be re-incarnated in another form. So rest in peace, Mayuri (Mary) Kotecha, my neighbourhood friend.
  17. Returning from the funeral, I dropped into the York Gardens Active party and the consultations in the Library about the estate regeneration. I must say that I was very disappointed about the consultation. It seemed far too vague to encourage almost any popular response. I left with a certain feeling of dis-satisfaction, which ironically was shared by the potential developers. The Council has to improve on that. My good humour was, however, restored by meeting this charming cool cat on the way out!
  18. Finally, have you seen the story about the £65,000 funding for improvements to Latchmere Recreation Ground. I must confess that I know nothing much about this but it is announced in a July 31st press release from Wandsworth Guardian and includes the following online address http://enablelc.org/parkssurvey. residents are encouraged to give their views in the very first week of August – and I recommend those of you, local to the Rec, to do so.

My Programme for August

1.     I am helping to review Battersea Society’s suggested list of buildings of local historic and/or architectural significance on Tuesday, 2nd August.

2.     I have my Council surgery in Battersea Reference Library from 10 am on Saturday, 6th August. Do come and see me if you have any particular concern.

3.     I am at the Planning Applications Committee on the 15th.

4.     And have yet another by-election in Tooting ward on 18th.

5.     And then on 22nd, I am off for a three-week holiday to Florence and then on to the Croatian coast.

Do you know?

Last month I asked which anniversary of Christ Church School was being celebrated at the recent Falcon Festival. It was, of course, as a few of you replied, the school’s 150th anniversary.

At the same Festival we also celebrated a 150th anniversary at the Este Road Fire Station, but it was not the 150th anniversary of that building so what was it that happened in 1866? And secondly the fire station is said to be a “cut-price” miniature of another fire station elsewhere. Do you know which?